NFTA Buffalo Metro Rail

July 2011. Fountain Plaza (originally Huron)
Buffalo Metro Rail is the public transit rail system in Buffalo, New York, USA; it is operated by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA). The system consists of a single, 6.4-mile (10.3 km) long line that runs for most of the length of Main Street in the City of Buffalo, from HSBC Arena in Downtown Buffalo to the south campus of the University at Buffalo in the northeast corner of the city. Metro Rail is a light rail transit (LRT) system as characterized by the American Public Transportation Association although it shares many characteristics with "heavy rail" metro systems.
Along 80 percent of its track(5.2 miles (8.4 km)), it operates in a high-speed underground subway environment with high-level platforms. The remaining 20 percent of the alignment (1.2 miles (1.9 km)) is on the surface in a dedicated transit mall separated from automobile traffic with low-level platforms (mini-high level platforms provide handicapped access to one door per train at the south end of each station). Trains in the downtown transit mall do interact with automobile traffic at cross streets, where movements are governed by non-vital traffic signals.
Metro Rail operates electric multiple-unit light rail vehicles (LRVs) in two-to-four car trains with power drawn from an overhead catenary system. The Buffalo trains and SEPTA in Philadelphia are the only modern rigid-body (non-articulated) LRVs operating in North America. When the construction on Metro Rail began in 1978, it was intended to be the first line for an extensive system that would spread throughout the city and suburbs. However, during the construction of the line and afterward, Buffalo's population declined significantly, and the new line's ridership was much lower than originally anticipated. The cost of the urban section was so high that no funding was available to extend the lines into the suburbs, including the Amherst campus of the University at Buffalo. Efforts to obtain funding for feeder lines have met with little success. (wikipedia)

[@redcomic619]

I REALLY, REALLY wish Rochester had one.

[@ArtStone]

A lot of available capacity! I count maybe 6 people in 3 car train

[@sega310982]

They did. They shut it down in the 50's.

[@85steph]

Damn, train (1:28:) need some grease on them brakes